Professor Mark Hetzler of UW Mead Witter school of Music illustrating the Doppler effect by playing trombone out of a moving vehicle.

Last spring I had the great privilege and pleasure to collaborate with Professor Steve Meyers and local Madison band Mr. Chair on a geoscience lecture about the origins of planet earth. For the past ten years Steve has been thinking about how to better teach geoscience in ways that more people can relate to. Over the years this often lead him to think about the intersections of geoscience and art, since many people relate to art more readily than hard science (and who can blame them). As a Teaching Assistant for his geoscience 100 course last spring, we quickly realized we shared this common interest.

As much as I adore geoscience, a greater passion of mine is visual media. Fortunately for me the two intersect in wonderful ways. When Steve learned about my love of communicating science thorough visual mediums, he introduced me to his idea for “Beginnings” and asked if I’d like to be a part of it. As luck had it, last spring was also the first time that the class was taught in Agriculture Hall 125, which is a turn-of-the-century style lecture hall that was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. Naturally it made a fantastic venue for what he had in mind.

Over the ensuing weeks Steve collaborated with Mr. Chair, a local Madison band, and commissioned them to write original music for his “4 act” lecture on the origins of earth. Steve recruited me as Director of Photography for the project which entailed shooting footage to be used within the lecture itself, as well as shooting and editing a “teaser” video of the live event. The final product was recently published in a press release by the University of Wisconsin and serves as the first official product released by Tadada Scientific Labs (website coming). With another semester of geoscience 100 coming up quick, we’re already thinking about what the next installment will look like! #teaser

Time is a fickle thing. Despite living in Thailand for 6 months of the past year, my time there feels like an eternity ago. Putting together this video has been a difficult endeavor. First, its been tough simply finding the time to do so, more significantly, however, revisiting my time there has been emotionally taxing. As anyone who has forced themselves out of their own comfort zones knows, there is a freedom, a liberation of self found beyond that threshold. It becomes particularly notable when you return to find that threshold further out than it previously was. Naturally, that experience is an emotional one. Sifting through my hours of footage to compile this 5 minute video has been a condensed revisitation of that emotional journey punctuated by the fact that my time in that incredible country is a thing of the past. This video (like most of my videos) serves more as a selfish and narcissistic diary of my time than anything else. For that reason I'd like to thank those of you who do watch it for taking the time to empathetically glimpse an experience of mine that will forever be an important one in my life.

A while back Marika posted a "Day in the life" post in our travel blog (https://ethikaoutandabout.wordpress.com/). It inspired me to put together a "day in the #teacherlife" video. While the video by no means captures the happenings of everyday, especially the crazy stuff (i.e. the snake in my classroom today), it serves to illustrate the goings on of an average day for me. Hope you enjoy!

The Instant Gram

My last post was about stopping to appreciate a sunset. Despite the simplicity of that, my point was that few of us actually do. I’d wager that even less of us put in the effort to stop (or rather get up) and appreciate a sunrise. @geogal217 and @camstabatch taught me a lesson in sunrise appreciation last March when they charged out into the chilly waters off the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand to get an eye-level view of the rising sun.
#ethancparrish #sunrise #stopandlook #appreciation #newzealand #oceanview #sunriseoftheday #godisanartist #southernhemisphere #nikond750 #nogeotag

When was the last time you stopped and took the time to sit and appreciate a #sunset ? I’ll be the first to admit that i don’t do it nearly as often as I should. I am, however, glad that I stopped to take this one in over the sage desert of Wyoming.
#ethancparrish #wyoming #beautiful #timelapse #taketime #paintedsky #fieldwork #nikond750 #godisanartist #justrelax #behindthescenes #bts #nogeotag

Despite being on the rainy side of the South Island of New Zealand, we managed to grab a gorgeous day to drive up the coast. Fun fact: the rivers on this side (west side) of the island are some of the most erosive on the planet. This is largely due to the sheer volume of precipitation in both liquid and solid form that falls here annually. Until recently the glaciers in NZ were among only a handful of mountain glaciers on the planet still advancing. Many climate change skeptics cited this fact as evidence against climate change. In fact it was the incredible volume of precipitation engendered by orographic effect among other things that allowed the glaciers to be as healthy as they were in a warming climate. #ethancparrish #nikond750 #glacialgeology #newzealand #geologyrocks #climatechange #climatechangeisreal #scienceiscool #rivers #erosion #glaciers #westcoast #westcoastbestcoast #orographic #precipitation #nz

Here’s a hump for #humpday! More accurately, is a septarian concretion or locally cemented mud/sandstone bound by minerals concentrically precipitating out from a central point. Subsequently, the uncemented and thus much softer mud/sandstone around these “humps” has eroded away leaving these concretions sitting on the beach. Arguably the most famous in the world, these boulders, locally known as the Moeraki Boulders are found on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. As you can imagine they are the subject of rich Māori legend given their bizarre and alluring existence. Astoundingly, even today in the age of pocket knowledge, tourists argue about their origin. I heard one man tell his partner with enviable confidence that they’re lithified “whale gall stones”. Can’t fault creative thinking! Haha. •
•
•
#ethancparrish #fujifilmx100t #moerakiboulders #newzealand #southisland #nz #geology #maori #beautiful #concretion #geologyrocks #pocketknowledge #creativethinking #hump #natgeotravel #natgeoyourshot

Sometimes I just can’t think of a good caption for a photo. Feel free to help me out on this one ☝️
•
•
•
#ethancparrish #newzealand #nocaption #needsacaption #geologist #bandw #b&w #nikond750 #fieldtrip #moodytuesday

Maybe @allisondeanjones was thinking about the fascinating geology of the Chrystal’s Beach melange with its prolific exhibition of slicken fibers as that’s what we’d been talking about for the 3 hours leading up to this shot. But I like to think she was contemplating other things or maybe just taking a moment to appreciate how beautiful this planet is as she gazed out over the southern ocean off the coast of the South Island of New Zealand. #ethancparrish #nikond750 #thinkdeep #geologyrocks #chrystalsbeach #slickenfibers #structuralgeology #oceanviews #appreciatebeauty